Pandora Update Improves Playback Buffering for Flaky Connections

The streaming music sector may be on its way to becoming saturated with too many options. Time will tell whether all the different services can co-exist, but in the meantime, one of the industry's pioneers, Pandora, is ensuring that if it falls by the wayside, it won't be due to neglect in terms of app updates. Version 4.4 of Pandora has been released to iTunes, and among other things, if purportedly offers better buffering to keep your music stutter-free when you're stuck on an unreliable connection.

In addition, if you mute your iPhone, Pandora will automatically pause the track you're listening to, or at least it's supposed to. We weren't able to engage the feature when testing Pandora on an updated iPhone 4S device.

Version 4.4 delivers "more links to more of what you love, all the URLs that work on Pandora.com now work just as well on your phone," and of course the usual round of bug fixes and general improvements. All this is an effort to remain relevant as services like Google Music All Access and iTunes Radio enter the fray.